The BBC Give Us Good Grief With The Story Of Peanuts

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning, Good Grief: The Story of Peanuts is now available via the iPlayer – and, in theory at least, it’s accessible worldwide. A 30-minute audio documentary on Charles Schulz’s world-beating strip and, to a large extent, Schulz himself, the show features contributions from Chris Ware, Russell T. Davies and Chip Kidd, as well as interviews with Schulz’s widow Jean and children Craig and Jill.

Russell T. Davies talks about the comic timing executed through the use of “the third silent panel”, and here’s a couple of examples:

Of course, Schulz’s technique was far more sophisticated and varied than that. Here’s a couple of other samples of how he used non-dialogue panels:

The bed-music is, of course, by Vince Guaraldi but the show’s focus is firmly on the strip for way over half of the run time. I’d have been happy if the whole documentary ran for twice as long, if not more.

iPlayer playback for this show is only available until 12:02pm GMT on Tuesday, 16 Nov 2010. Does anybody know how I can archive the audio? I don’t want it to just fade away and be forgotten and would much rather keep a copy somehow.